INTRODUCTION
Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the doctoral internship at Child and Family Guidance Center. The internship program has sustained continuous APA accreditation for over 50 years and throughout we have specialized in child, adolescent and family clinical psychology.
Located in the northern part of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, the Center serves vulnerable and at-risk children and adolescents as well as their families. Because the Center is committed to serving the “underserved,” we provide a continuum of quality mental healthcare, supportive social services and links to needed resources. Interns gain significant experience assisting families who face the challenges of multiple stressors, including those associated with mental health, poverty, and acculturation in an urban setting.
The Center has always had a strong commitment to remaining current with changing trends in community mental health service delivery. As such, we are able to offer interns a wide and dynamic variety of experiences in the context of a broad spectrum of modalities and settings, including community-based as well as Center-based settings. Interns provide individual, family and group psychotherapy as well as psychodiagnostic assessment for children and youth who present with a broad range of diagnoses and family constellations. Interns are integrated within the Center’s multidisciplinary team approach, working closely with psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and others whose combined efforts enable clients and their families to become empowered, overcome challenges, and flourish within the community.
Our internship, along with the agency as a whole, responded and adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic with the primary goal of continuing best practices care for our clients while minimizing the health risks to our clients, staff, and the community. Like many other similar internship sites, we have transitioned back to mainly in-person services. In-person services to clients are provided following current safety protocols. However, we continue to provide telehealth services on a case-by-case basis. Telehealth services are provided primarily through HIPAA-compliant video platforms. Similarly, staff meetings, supervision, and weekly seminar meetings may be either remote or in-person as best meets the staff needs and current health guidance.
ABOUT CHILD AND FAMILY GUIDANCE CENTER
Child and Family Guidance Center serves the San Fernando Valley, a part of the City of Los Angeles, whose population is ethnically and economically diverse and numbers more than one million. It is a private non-profit organization that has been in operation since 1962 and constitutes a network of mental health services for children and families. The Center is a multi-funded agency with capacity to provide traditional outpatient treatment services, therapeutic non-public school services, and specialized programs as well as community outreach and active collaboration with other agencies. The organizational structure encourages inter-professional relationships and responsibilities based on functional rather than discipline classification, and. multidisciplinary collaboration and teamwork are essential to the services we provide. The theoretical perspective is integrationist during their training, interns have opportunities to work with supervisors who conceptualize cases and intervene from a variety of different theoretical orientations.
The Center has a large facility which opened in Northridge in 1976, designed for its Outpatient programs and Northpoint School, a therapeutic non-public day school for severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children. A second facility, also nearby in Northridge, houses general outpatient services and the Early Childhood and Trauma Services. Both programs operate general outpatient and home-based services as well as community outreach and school-site programs. The Early Childhood and Trauma Services program functions as an outpatient program but continue an emphasis on their historical focus on child abuse, neglect, and domestic violence. An additional facility, located in Palmdale, provides the full range of outpatient, home-based and school-site services to both urban and rural families in the Antelope Valley. Our most recently added “satellite” is the North Hills Wellness Center – a shared endeavor among CFGC, Valley Community Healthcare (VCH) and Monroe High School which is located on the campus of Monroe High School; this program
implements a wellness model that provides integrated healthcare services to the North Hills community and the students; All facilities were built with appropriate specifications for clinical offices, physical facilities for therapeutic classroom milieu, and observation, and special equipment for training, research, and evaluation. The recent increase in remote services has allowed clients to more easily access some services across different sites; however, interns can expect to be housed at one of the two main sites in Northridge.
Adjunct services include the Community Resource Services Department (CRS), Psychiatric Services and Therapeutic Behavioral Services (TBS). The CRS Department was created to work across sites and divisions of the Center to provide adjunct services to indigent families that are receiving mental health treatment at the Center. The CRS programs are designed to link these families to both financial and community support services to increase their stability and allow them to address the mental health needs of their children in psychotherapy. Psychiatric services are provided at all Center sites by 10 full- and part-time psychiatrists who work for the Center. Psychiatric Services include evaluation, ongoing psychopharmacology follow-up, and consultation to referring staff. TBS is a specialized adjunctive services program designed to provide services in the home or community in addition to more traditional intervention strategies.
ABOUT THE INTERNSHIP
Goals and Philosophy of Training
The fundamental goal of the internship program is to provide interns with a combination of didactic and broad-based, supervised, direct service experiences that will prepare them for independent practice of clinical psychology in the future. Upon completion of the program, interns should evidence the personal maturity and integrity necessary for effective professional work, as well as a personal commitment to the highest standards of practice. In addition, they should exhibit attainment of a normative level of clinical skills commensurate with their level of professional development, and they should show a capacity for and commitment to self and peer review, continuing education, and ongoing professional development
Our doctoral internship program is designed to ensure that interns can acquire and demonstrate substantial understanding and competency of the Profession Wide Competencies delineated by APA. These include Research; Ethical and Legal Standards; Individual and Cultural Diversity; Professional Values, Attitudes and Behaviors; Communication and Interpersonal Skills; Assessment; Intervention; Supervision; and Consultation and Interprofessional/Interdisciplinary Skills.
The formal organization of the program reflects an educational philosophy which endorses generic learning, competency-based sequences of training, multi-disciplinary and multi-theoretical perspectives, and promotes the development of sensitivit y to the clinical implications of ethnic and cultural pluralism. The major objective is to integrate clinical/behavioral health with developmental psychology, ecology, and family systems formulations. The primary educational model is rooted in the practitioner-scholar model. While the focus is on clinical practice, emphasis is also placed on the importance of remaining current with the professional literature, increasing one’s critical thinking abilities, and respecting the importance of ongoing scholarl y inquiry to enhance practice. Our educational philosophy incorporates interdisciplinary learning. We emphasize learning of strategies that involve the coordinated efforts of mental health professionals acting conjointly with other Center staff and community organizations whose combined purpose is to facilitate the adjustment of individuals and families within the community even when severe pathology is present.
Our program promotes cross-cultural perspectives and strives for culturally humble and sensitive practice. The program includes the entire range of assessment and treatment strategies for a community-based outpatient setting as well as for non-public school services. We strive for the clear delineation of contemporary legal, ethical, and clinical issues which define the obligations of clinicians to balance patients' rights with societal needs, expectations, and standards.
Treatment perspectives are consistent with current national priorities of providing empirically supported, evidence-based treatment; providing services that focus on prevention and early
intervention with youth and families; and treating severe psychopathology, with foci on the family, alternatives to hospitalization, collaboration among relevant social systems and family support networks, and services to under-served groups
The internship, along with Child and Family Guidance Center as a whole, responded and adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic with the primary goals of continuing best practice care for our clients while minimizing the health risks to clients, staff, and community. This goal, for example, was briefly met by a full transition to remote services. Presently we implement a “hybrid” model; a combination of primarily in-person client services and staff operation with remote services available as needed.is likely to best serve our clients, staff, and community for the immediate future. Additional periodic changes may be implemented depending on the current nature of the situation and the needs/requirements of multiple stakeholders. We will continue to heed current guidance from health and governmental entities to make science-based decisions in the best interest of our clients, staff and community Interns receive specialized training on telehealth service provision so that they are adequately prepared for cases that may require this type of intervention and/or assessment. All new staff, including interns, are required to work on-site for the first 3 to 4 months, and then the option of working from home 1 to 2 days a week can be considered.
Organization of the Doctoral Internship Curriculum
The doctoral internship program is designed to be completed within a full-time (40 hours per week), 50 week year. Approximately half of the intern's time is spent in direct service provision, 15% in related support or indirect services, and the remaining 35% is committed to didactic learning including seminar attendance and individual and group supervision. Because most of our clients are schoolage children who live in families where parents work, interns are expected to work on-site in the evenings (i.e., until 8:00 p.m.) two days per week.
Interns participate in constructing their individualized programs within a broad general framework that provides experience with diverse diagnostic groupings, a full range of treatment interventions and modalities, and a comprehensive understanding of working with children and families within the broader context of their community. Interns gain significant exposure to evidence-based and empirically supported intervention strategies. Throughout the year, the interns’ programs are monitored and modified to meet the individual needs of each intern, provide a broad range of clinical experiences, and allow for remediation of any areas of weakness.
In all programs, there are opportunities for experience and didactic training relevant to cultural variables in mental health service delivery as well as family / community organization situations. The community we serve is characterized by rich cultural and socioeconomic heterogeneity, and includes areas of economic deprivation and barrios with multiple problems including high incidence of crime and youth gang activity, physical and emotional abuse and neglect of children, domestic violence, high unemployment, problems relating to undocumented legal status, and so on. The most numerous of the groups currently served by the Center are of Hispanic or Latine heritage.
Because of our large and continually increasing population of Latine families, the internship program is uniquely suited to providing a variety of opportunities for training interns who are fluently bilingual in English and Spanish, including opportunities to provide individual, family and group psychotherapy with bilingual or Spanish-only clients, psychological testing with use of instruments appropriate for bilingual children and adolescents, supervision in Spanish, and so on. The Center has a strong commitment to training both staff and trainees for work with Spanish-speaking families. Issues related to culture are suffused throughout our work, but there is also focused training on increasing the bilingual therapist’s skill in service delivery to clients and parents who speak primarily or only Spanish. Particular attention is paid to the problems that can emerge for families when there is an intergenerational difference in the acculturation process and for families in which mixed documentation status is an issue
Once interns are matched with our agency, they are assigned to a Major Assignment at one of the CFGC sites in the San Fernando Valley, where they will spend the majority of their direct service and supervision time (75 to 80%) for the course of the training year. During Orientation in the fall of the
internship year, interns also select a Minor Assignment; these minor assignments are designed to meet the needs of the intern as well as the needs that exist within the agency at the beginning of the training year. The minor assignments are designed to round out the interns’ training by providing additional experiences not covered in the Major Assignment activities.
Technical support includes a laptop that may be taken home for remote work or connected to a work station on site at CFGC for service delivery and documentation needs. These computers have been programmed with software which assists in significantly decreasing the amount of time spent in documentation of services (this involves the utilization of charting assistant software designed specifically for use within our agency). Interns have access to Microsoft products, including work email, Word documents, Outlook, calendar, and Teams video meetings. In addition, interns have access to scoring software for a variety of psychological testing instruments commonly used with children and adolescents. Interns also have access to the internet at all sites. In addition to regular ongoing contact with general support staff responsible for billing, medical records, reception, and so on, interns also have access to the Training Department Administrative Assistant for a variety of functions, including checking out testing materials,
Major Assignments
CFGC as an agency provides services at a large number of locations in the San Fernando and Antelope Valleys of the greater Los Angeles, as well as in schools, client homes, and other community settings. Interns will be based in one of the two programs at two sites in the Northridge area of the San Fernando Valley. Overall, the role and clinical experience for all interns will be the same regardless of their major assignment site. All sites provide outpatient psychotherapy and related services. All programs provide a broad array of prevention, early intervention, and treatment services for youth with emotional and/or behavioral difficulties. We offer treatment for children, adolescents and transitional age youth age 0 to 25 years. These children and adolescents present with a variety of diagnostic issues as well as complex environmental and family stressors. We serve a significant number of Latinx families, so we often need clinicians and other service providers who can provide services equally competently in Spanish and in English. Thus, due to cultural and linguistic factors, we are especially interested in matching with interns who are fluently bilingual in English and Spanish.
In all programs, interns have opportunities to provide brief and extended individual, family and group treatment for children and adolescents. Given the breadth of symptom presentation, interns may have opportunities to work with children with typical symptoms of anxiety, depression and disruptive behaviors, as well as potentially more severe, chronic conditions, trauma, abuse, autism spectrum, co-occurring substance use, and so on. The majority of clients will be between 6 and 18 years of age; however, interns may have cases from the 0-5 program or transitional aged youth. Interns are exposed to and trained in evidence-based practices, multisystemic and contextual treatment approaches and community and home-based services. Interns also have opportunities to provide group therapy.
Minor Assignment
The goal of the Minor Assignment is to provide interns with experiences that are different from their Major Assignment activities in order to round out their internship experience. While the Major Assignment is assigned when interns are matched with us, the selection of their Minor Assignment is made during orientation at the beginning of the internship year. Every year, the minor assignment options change as the changing needs of the various programs create new opportunities for interns. Listed below examples of the kind of minors that may be available in the Fall of 2026, although the list may change by the beginning of the training year:
1. Adult Services Team – Although the majority of services our agency provides are for children and youth and their families, we have been expanding our services to adults in our community, including transitional youth up to age 25 years, and the parents of our child clients. Interns who elect this minor assignment carry two to three young adult (18-25 years old) and/or adult clients (26 years +).
2. Psychodiagnostic Assessment – all Interns will participate in psychodiagnostic assessment through their major assignment as described below. However, an intern wishing to obtain a more
intensive psychodiagnostic experience may elect additional time focused on assessment. This opportunity may be appropriate whether the intern seeks to fill gaps in their assessment experience or seeks to expand an already strong base in assessment.
3. Family Therapy Training – while our agency is clearly family-focused in all of the services we provide, this minor assignment provides a unique opportunity for more in-depth specialized training in providing family therapy.
4. In-home Behavioral Intervention Team – This minor assignment is designed to provide specialized training in work with very young clients (0-5) who have been identified as needing services. Interns work as primary therapists (typically in the office) in teams with behavioral specialists who engage with the families of these clients in the home setting.
5. Northpoint School – interns in this minor work in our nonpublic school with adolescents whose behavioral and emotional disturbances are so severe that their academic needs cannot be met even in the most restrictive settings that the public schools can offer. This minor offers good experience in working with classroom staff as well as meeting individually with students in psychotherapy.
The final list of minor assignment options will be available for selection during internship orientation in September.
Psychodiagnostic Assessment
All interns participate in providing psychological testing services for clients of the Center. Interns are typically expected to complete five to six comprehensive diagnostic assessment batteries and integrated reports over the course of the year. Time spent on psychological assessment is considered part of the direct service time in the Major Assignment. The psychodiagnostic Assessment Seminar supplements weekly individual supervision sessions in providing interns with opportunities to expand their skills in this area. Care is taken in the assignment of testing cases to ensure that each intern’s testing experience is characterized by a wide range of ages, diagnostic categories, and referral questions.
All testing currently provided by interns is with cases that are already in treatment at the Center. The typical age range for testing is 5 – 18 years, and most are 8 – 16 years of age. Referrals come from a wide range of programs but many referrals will be from the interns’ Major Assignment site. Referrals are generated by therapists who require assistance with differential diagnosis and so the assessments cut across diagnostic categories using multiple assessment techniques to assist with case formulation and recommendations for treatment. Results m ay also be used to advocate for services outside of CFGC, particularly in the schools.
While we may have more than one option to address a referral question, we emphasize a core set of instruments to ensure a baseline common experience. Additional instruments may be added to the battery as needed, but interns will be expected to have and/or develop basic competency in the core instruments. We routinely use the Wechsler scales (WISC-V or WAIS-V and WIAT4) as the starting point for cognitive assessment and academic screening. We also address a variety of socioemotional differential diagnosis questions. In most cases, we will start with the BASC-3 or possibly the PAI-A for older children. The Connors4 long form is our measure for Disruptive disorder rule outs, which are also common. As needed, the IVA2 may be added for ADHD assessment. We also cover interview formats, with a focus on the KSADS. Many of our clients are Spanish-English bilingual and some require formal assessment by bilingual examiners; typically the Expressive and Receptive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Bilingual, and Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey. While all of these instruments will be addressed in the weekly Psychodiagnostic Assessment Seminar, it is our hope that incoming interns will already have exposure and experience with most of them.
Evidence Based Practices
In cooperation with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, the Center implements a number of EBPs under the county’s Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) Program. Currently these EBP offerings include Child Parent Psychotherapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT),
Seeking Safety, Positive Parenting Program (Triple P), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP). Treatment with these EBPs currently comprises about half of the services provided by the Center.
All interns will participate in the Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP) program. For a more complete description, see the section about MAP under “Didactic Component” below. Training in Seeking Safety is also likely to be available. Interns may also be trained in other EBPs depending on the needs of their Major Assignment program and on the availability of training slots in the departments in which they Major Assignment takes place.
While some of the EBPs are limited to specific sites within the Center, most have been implemented across all sites, including all of the sites in which interns will work. Our contract with the County Department of Mental Health requires that all clinicians implementing these EBPs be trained by developer-approved trainers. Because of this, interns may have limited access to formal training in some of the EBPs during their internship year. The Center currently has certified trainers in some of the EBPs, including MAP and Seeking Safety
Didactic Component
This component has two clusters of programming which are operationalized as follows:
1. Major learning is accomplished through individual and small group supervision which is designed for intensive, individualized instruction in the assessment or intervention strategies for given clients and their families. Interns typically receive 5-6 hours per week of supervision:
1 hour of individual supervision with primary supervisor of clinical cases in Major Assignment
1 hour of individual supervision on psychodiagnostic assessment
1 hour of supervision on group treatment in major assignment
1 hour of supervision on minor assignment (May be individual or small group)
1-2 hours of group supervision on MAP cases
Other times included to interns’ schedules as needed
2. Attendance at the following seminars is designed to enable interns to develop a knowledge base required of those who pursue the profession of child mental health in community-based treatment networks:
Clinical Issues and Professional Development Seminar
This seminar, which meets for 2 hours each week throughout the course of the training year, is designed to cover topics related to child psychotherapy, child development, and cultural competence. One of the primary purposes of this seminar is to provide a forum for discussing the APA ethical code and ethical dilemmas that arise in work with children and families. Using both lecture and group discussion, a variety of areas are addressed. Certain topics are covered each year (e.g., attachment, the developm ental impact of child maltreatment, resilience, and cultural sensitivity/humility). We also address a variety of issues related to life after internship, including decision-making regarding post-doctoral opportunities and training regarding providing clinical supervision. However, intern interests drive this course, and each year these interests change, depending on the intern group. Interns are invited and encouraged to discuss their research on issues relative to their individual domains of expertise. They are also encouraged to introduce topics or present cases for discussion.
Psychodiagnostic Assessment Seminar
The assessment seminar offers interns graduate level instruction and practice in administering a core set of tests and other procedures for gathering data; organizing the resulting observations and data into relevant, useful inferences or impressions; and writing concise client-focused reports. Prior basic experience with and understanding of the methods, principles and theories underlying psychodiagnostic assessment is expected. Emphasis is placed on acquisition of practical skills permitting interns to function
as increasingly independent consultants to colleagues and parents. Course content balances the pragmatics of administration and interpretation of assessment batteries for a range of childhood problems with exploration of the assumptions and limits (i.e., implicit personality theories, related philosophical beliefs, and empirical constraints) challenging current practice. The core instruments may be supplemented by more referral-specific instruments. Seminar topics focus on the construction of dynamic formulations and common differential diagnoses. Given the high proportion of Latinx clients, issues relevant to assessment of Latinx children are addressed throughout the seminar and more explicitly through topics such as assessing monolingual/bilingual children and acculturation. This seminar begins with a 23 day workshop in September, followed by a weekly 2-hour meeting.
Professional Development Seminar
This seminar, which meets three to four times each month beginning in October, has two basic purposes. One is to provide a forum for addressing issues related to the APA ethics code and the internship program’s expectations regarding development of professional identity. The other purpose is addressing issues related to life after internship. Typical topics covered include making decisions about the post-doc year (e.g., choosing between academic or clinical positions, deciding between entry-level jobs or formal post-doc training. etc.).
Included in this seminar is a multi-week module on preparation for providing clinical supervision.
Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP) Group Supervision Seminar
Rather than a single-protocol EBP, MAP is a program designed to improve the quality, efficiency, and outcomes of children’s mental health services by giving practitioners easy access to the most current scientific information and by providing user-friendly monitoring tools and clinical protocols. Using an on-line database, the system can suggest formal evidence-based programs or, alternatively, can provide detailed recommendations about discrete components of evidence-based treatments relevant to a specific youth’s characteristics. MAP as practiced at the Center focuses on four common symptom areas with children and adolescents: anxiety, depression, disruptive behaviors and trauma. This seminar begins with a 5-day intensive training in the Fall. Interns then participate in weekly group supervision for their MAP cases and ongoing training in the model for one to two hours for the duration of the internship year. The seminar meets the developer requirements for participant certification as a MAP Therapist.
Continuing Education Experiences
There are continuing educational experiences for senior staff which are available to interns as well. Regularly scheduled interdisciplinary in-services provide an opportunity for staff and interns to hear presentations and discuss various topics, including perspectives on treatment, ethical and legal issues, child and adolescent psychopharmacology, and new developments in treatment approaches and mental health service delivery. The Center is an approved provider of continuing education as mandated by law for licensed psychologists, LCSWs and MFTs. In this capacity, the Center also offers periodic seminars and workshops which are available to other mental health professionals in the community.